XYZ Racing Tarmac Rally Coilovers — Subaru FORESTER SJ 4WD 2012-2018

The Forester SJ’s raised ride height and taller body roll further into a stage than a standard Impreza saloon, and on a closed tarmac route that roll shows up exactly where you don’t want it – mid-corner, under trail braking, through a crest taken flat. The XYZ Racing Tarmac Rally coilover is built to keep the SJ’s symmetrical AWD platform planted through that kind of event, where grip levels change corner to corner and the car needs to react the same way each time.

This is a stage-specific set-up, not a fast-road compromise. Where a Super Sport kit splits its attention between comfort and cornering, the Tarmac Rally coilover is calibrated purely around what a Subaru Forester needs on a sealed special stage: fast direction changes, hard braking into hairpins, and full-throttle exits onto broken tarmac.

What this coilover does for your 2012-2018 Subaru Forester SJ 4WD

Fitting this coilover to the SJ lowers the car’s centre of gravity and tightens the body control that the factory ride height works against, so weight transfer under braking and direction change happens faster and with less lag. The damping is set up to absorb the jolt from broken tarmac and crest compressions without kicking the rear axle sideways, which keeps the Forester’s AWD system putting power down cleanly out of hairpins instead of fighting wheelspin. Because the settings come from actual tarmac rally use, the compression and rebound balance is aimed at holding tyre contact through the kind of mid-corner bumps that unsettle a standard SJ, rather than simply stiffening the car up across the board. The result on a Forester built for stage work is a car that turns in with less of the SJ’s characteristic body roll and stays composed when a stage surface changes from smooth to broken without warning.

About the Tarmac Rally coilover

XYZ Racing’s Tarmac Rally coilover is built specifically to cope with the impact of uneven, broken pavement rather than the smooth surfaces a road-going kit is set up for. The damper is calibrated to absorb hard hits from big bumps and crest compressions and to control the shock through the body of the car, which keeps the tyre in contact with the road instead of skipping across it. That contact is what the kit is really selling: more usable traction through a stage, and a chassis stable enough to let the driver commit to the next corner rather than backing off to check the car’s still settled. The damping curve isn’t a generic fast-road tune adapted for rally use – it comes directly out of XYZ Racing’s own tarmac rally experience, so the compression and rebound rates reflect what the team found the car actually needed on stage. On the Forester SJ that means a set-up built around the platform’s AWD weight transfer and its taller stance, not a lowering kit with rally branding stuck on top.

Fitment for the Subaru Forester SJ 4WD (2012-2018)

This kit is built for the Subaru Forester SJ, chassis code SU03-1, across the 2012 to 2018 production run, covering the 4WD drivetrain fitted to every SJ built in that window. Confirm your Forester falls within that year range before ordering, as suspension mounting points and geometry can shift across a generation’s production run.

What buyers also search for

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• Forester SJ ride height and damping upgrade built for closed-road stage work

Every Tarmac Rally kit is built around the spec your stage entry needs – pick your damping and spring rate for the Forester SJ in the configurator below.